quite a year for Jeff Ryan and my Requiem! Five performances, 250 performers on stage each time!

Nov 13, 2017

This past weekend Afghanistan: Requiem for a Generation was performed in two cities at the same time! WHEN is it going to be performed at our NATION’S CAPITAL!!!????

‘A great many occasional pieces carry with them some limitations that prevent performances outside the specific occasion for which they were composed. No so here. In Steele’s fine poetry, mixing words of the Latin Mass with powerful imagistic writing addressing the pathos of war, and in Ryan’s music, this oratorio is certainly one of the most important extended Canadian choral works from this century.’

– Kenneth Delong, Calgary Herald
Nov. 13, 2017

‘this new work, Afghanistan: Requiem for a Generation, by composer Jeffrey Ryan and poet Suzanne Steele is compelling, powerful stuff. Those lucky audience members who get experience it on Remembrance Day itself, should feel especially moved. […] Steele, who went [on the road to war to Afghanistan] with the Canadian Forces in 2008 for two years as an official war artist, returned with verses detailing the drudgery and suffering of the soldiers, and the mixed emotions faced on their return home — either dead or alive. She and Ryan interwove her words with the Latin text of the traditional Requiem Mass to create a many-layered picture of chaos, confusion, hope, relief, and despair. The best shorthand description I can think of is that this work is a direct descendant of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, which is now 55 years old.

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The page you're reading contains a single diary entry entitled quite a year for Jeff Ryan and my Requiem! Five performances, 250 performers on stage each time!. It was posted here on November 13, 2017.